Globe Projection:

Description: Globe projections are a spherical model of the earth.

Advantages:

• The most accurate way to depict the entire earth.
• Direction, shape, distances and area can all be accurately represented.

Disadvantages:

• Impossible to show great detail.
• Expensive to make.
• Bulky to carry.
• Hard to store.

Cylindrical Projection

Description: Cylindrical projections are designed as if a cylinder were wrapped around the globe; both the longitude and latitude lines are straight and parallel.

Advantages:

• Can be created on a flat piece of paper making it convenient and inexpensive.
• Accurate for depicting small areas.
• Can depict the entire earth at once.

Disadvantages:

• Distorts large areas.
• Areas near the poles appear larger than they really are. For example, South America is 8 times larger than Greenland, but on map 2.1.3 Greenland appears to be larger.

Pseudocylindrical Projections

Description: Pseudocylindrical projections have latitude lines that are straight and parallel, and longitude lines that are equally spaced. However on a pseudocylindrical projection only the central longitude line, or the Prime Meridian, is straight; all the other longitudinal meridians are curved.

Advantages:

• The scale is constant along any given latitude.
• Sizes are less distortion than some other projections. Notice that Greenland does not appear quite as large in comparison to South America on map 2.1.4 as it does on map 2.1.3.
• The entire earth can be depicted at once.

Disadvantages:

• No area of the map is completely free of distortion.
• Shapes are more distorted than on many other projections.

Conic Projection

Description: Conic projections are designed as if a cone were placed over the globe.

Advantages:

• Good for depicting areas with large East West dimensions, like the United States.
• Accurate scale along a parallel line.
• Can depict the entire earth on one map.

Disadvantage:

• The scale is distorted from North to South

Flat plane projection

Description: If a flat projection were placed on a globe it would only touch the globe at one point. Flat plane projections can be placed anywhere on the globe, though the projection will always be calculated from the center point.

Advantages:

• The direction from a central point, such as the North Pole, is accurate.
• Shows distances and areas accurately in relation to the central pole.
• Accurate for use in navigation

Disadvantages:

• The direction and areas are only accurate in relationship to the central point.
• It takes several maps to depict the entire earth.

Equal-Area Projections

Description: Equal-area projections that accurately depict area on all regions of the map at one time. Equal-area projections that portray the entire earth look as if someone has cut a globe and then attempted to smooth it out on a flat surface, which distorts the shape.

Advantages:

• Shows correct proportion of areas.
• Can depict the whole earth at once.

Disadvantage:

• Distorts shape and angles.